Bible Commentaries

Calm After Storm

Isaiah 25:4).

Here we come upon language which the heart can understand, and which the heart responds to with personal gratitude. Sometimes the Scriptures leave us. They are like a great bird with infinite wings, flying away to the centres of light and the origin of glory, and we cannot follow them in their imperial infinite sweep; then they come down to us and flutter near our hearts, and speak or sing to us in words and tones we can comprehend. This verse is an instance in point. Every man who has had large experience of life can annotate this verse for himself; he needs no critic, no preacher, no orator, to help him into the innermost shrine and heart of this holy place. Each of us can repeat this verse as a part of his own biography: each can say, Thou hast been a strength to me when I was poor; I never knew my poverty when thou didst break the bread; we always thought it more than enough because the blessing so enlarged the morsel: thou hast been a strength to me in my need and in my distress; when my father and my mother forsook me thou didst take me up; thou didst turn my tears into jewellery, thou didst make my sorrows the beginnings of paeans and hymns of loud and perfect triumph: thou hast been a refuge from the storm; when men could not bear me, tolerate me, see anything in me to touch their complacency; when the roof was broken through by the weighty rain, and when the flood put out the last spark of fire, I never felt the cold because thou wast near me, and in the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delighted my soul. Thou hast been a shadow from the heat; I could always fly to thee at noontide, and rest in thine almightiness as a flock gathers itself around the great tree, and tarries for a while during the sultry noontide. So long as men can say this, with all the passion of earnestness, with all the vividness of personal consciousness, the Bible smiles at every attempt to overthrow its supremacy, and waits to take in the last wanderer from its hospitable shelter. Remember, therefore, when reading passages that are surcharged with judgment, verses that are all lightning, Scriptures that are hot as hell with God's anger, that other Scriptures must be quoted if we would realise a completing view of God, as to his personality and government and purpose; and the last and uppermost verdict will be, "God is love." When God once begins to be gracious, turns away from judgment, and dawns upon the world's consciousness like a new morning, who can tell what he will do? He gives with both hands; he withholds nothing; he not only causes the storm to cease, he proceeds to positive hospitality, goodness, beneficence; he comes down to us to search into our need in all its extent and urgency, and crowns the day with infinite satisfactions.

Now he will make a feast, and the table shall be spread upon the mountain where it can be well seen; it shall be a grand public feast, and the angels shall sound the banquet trumpet, and call the hungriest first to eat God's bread. He will deign to take up Oriental figures in order to express the amplitude of his provision, and the lavishness of his proposal to feed and bless the race: The Lord of hosts will make a feast "unto all people" ( Isaiah 25:6). What a gospel word is that—"all people." He only singled out one people that he might get at the rest. He never elected any one to stop at. He began by constructing a nation that he might by-and-by make a peculiar nation of the whole earth, and speak of his earth-church to all the other stars: and might he not in speaking of it speak almost with the boast of divine love? The feast shall be a feast "of fat things,"—an expression fully understood by the Oriental mind. "A feast of wines on the lees,"—wines that had rested long and become clarified, and have developed their richest flavour. "Of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined,"—as if repetition were needed to assure those who are called to the banquet that God had left nothing undone. When did God ever perform half a miracle? When did God say, I can do no more—I must return and complete this when my strength is recruited? When he lights this little earth there is more light runs off the edges to light other worlds than the little earth itself could contain; the earth has not room enough to contain the sun's hospitality of glory. Isaiah 25:8). We must not amend that expression—"swallow up." There is a sound in it which is equal to an annotation. We hear a splash in the infinite Atlantic, and the thing that is sunk has gone for ever. It was but a stone. Death is to be not mitigated, relieved, thrown into perspective which the mind can gaze upon without agony; it is to be swallowed up. Let it go! Death has no friends. Who names the ghastly monster with healthy pleasure? Who brings Death willingly to the feast? asks him to join the dance? begs him to tarry through the night, and weave stars of glory in the robe of gloom? Death has no friends. He is to be swallowed up, slain, forgotten. Yet in another aspect how gracious has death been in human history, What pain he has relieved; what injuries he has thrust into the silent tomb; what tumult and controversy he has ended. Men have found an altar at the tomb, a house of reconciliation in the graveyard, music for the heart in the toll and throb of the last knell. Even Death must have his tribute. He may not work willingly. He never saw himself. Let us be just. When Death is dead, will there be some other way into the upper city that is paved with gold, and calm with eternal Sabbath? Shall souls then ascend as did the Christ? Will chariots of fire then bear them to the city everlasting? Will angels then throng the house, and carry off the soul without wrench or pain, or need of heartbreak and farewell? How is it to be? for Death is dead, Death is swallowed up. Will some larger sleep enclose us in its soothing embrace, and woo us as with the voice of whispered love to the land of summer, the paradise of God? To our inquiries there is no reply in words. Yet may we not, even now, be so enabled to view death as to escape all its terrors? Even now death is abolished. With Christ in the house there is no death—there is but a hastening shadow, a flutter, a spasm, a vision, and then the infinite calm.

The prophet is here standing upon an equality with the apostle. The Apostle Paul uses the very same words, enlarges the same thought, with ineffable delight and thankfulness: Isaiah 25:8). Can we not wipe away our own tears? Never. If any man dry his own tears he shall weep again; but if God dry our tears our eyes shall never lose their light. It all comes, therefore, to a consideration of this solemn question—Who shall put an end to this sorrow? Shall we try frivolity—shall we drown our sorrows; shall we banish our grief by pre-engaging our memory by things that die in their using? Or shall we say, Thou living God of all joy, thou only canst put an end to human woe: make my heart glad, and then my face will shine; take the guilt away from my conscience and my whole nature, and then my tears will cease to flow? This is interior work, this is a spiritual miracle, this belongs to the reign of God and the ministry of grace. We resign ourselves, not passively and murmuringly, but actively and thankfully, to God, that he may make us glad with his own joy. The Lord awaits our consent to the drying of our tears.

Then God reveals himself by the overflowing abundance of his goodness:—

"And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation" ( Isaiah 25:9).

How is a king's gift known? Surely by its royalty of fulness, by its having upon it no mark or stain of grudging or littleness. How is God known in the earth? By the very fulness of it; by the attention which has been paid to secret places, to little corners, to tiny things, to threadlets that only a microscope can see. He has finished, so far, this world as if he had never had another world on which to lavish his generous care. We know God by the superabundance of the festival. He never gives merely enough. Yet he never exercises his dominion in wantonness and prodigality, but always with that economy which waits upon the wisest generosity. If we sin against the light we insult the whole noontide. It is no little artificial light that flickers in the infinite darkness that we despise, but a whole firmament of glory. If we sin against Providence, it is against a full table that we rebel; and it is upon an abundant harvest that we pronounce our curse. The Lord leaves nothing half done, does nothing with a grudging hand, keeps back nothing for his own enrichment. Doth not the goodness of the Lord lead thee to repentance? What a noble companion would Goodness make for any man who longed to go home again! Goodness, beginning with the spring, passing into the summer, reddening and purpling with the hospitable autumn—yes, and not scorning the field of snow and the wind all frost, for even there God keeps sanctuary and the Most High his testimony. Sinners, therefore, with an infinite turpitude are they who force their way to their lowest nature, to their original type, to the hell that awaits unrighteousness, through goodness so vast, so delicate, so infinite.

Are we surprised to find such delineations of God in the Old Testament? All these visions might have come before us from some apostolic standpoint. Who has taught us to talk about the "Old" Testament and the "New," as if they were issued from different heavens, and signed by different deities? "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord"—one thought, one purpose, one love. The Lamb was slain from before the foundation of the world: before there was any world to sin the sinning world was died for. Is this a mystery? only in words. Is this a contradiction? only in the letter. After long years of spiritual education the soul leaps up and says, Eureka! I have found it—I see it—I know the meaning now—thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift! When men turn their back upon the Old Testament they find no other. Even if they cling to the New Testament it is but half a book. The New Covenant can only be understood by those who are spiritually learned in the Old Covenant. The whole economy of God, in thought, in providence, in purpose, is one and indivisible. Then began the Christ of God at Moses, and the prophets, and the Isaiah 25:9

The text reads like an exclamation, like a great utterance of glad surprise. We may discover in it the voice of people who have been long expecting deliverance, and have at length realised it. The text Genesis 49:10 : "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a law-giver from between his feet, until Shiloh (the tranquilliser) come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be" (i.e. him shall the nations obey). The personality of Messiah occurs also in several psalms which were written before the times of Isaiah; for instance, in the second and one hundred and tenth, by David; in the forty-fifth, by the sons of Korah; in the seventy-second, by Solomon. Isaiah has especially developed the perception of the prophetic and priestly office of the Redeemer, while in the earlier annunciations of the Messiah the royal office is more prominent; although in Psalm cx. the priestly office also is pointed out. Of the two states of Christ, Isaiah has expressly described that of the exinanition of the suffering Christ, while, before him, his state of glory was made more prominent. In the Psalm the inseparable connection between justice and suffering, from which the doctrine of a suffering Messiah necessarily results, is not expressly applied to the Messiah. We must not say that Isaiah first perceived that the Messiah was to suffer, but we must grant that this knowledge was in him more vivid than in any earlier writer; and that this knowledge was first shown by Isaiah to be an integral portion of Old Testament doctrine."—Kitto's Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature.

Prayer

Almighty God, we come to the throne of grace, not of judgment, and there we may plead the blood that was shed for sin, and by the mighty mystery of the Cross, and all its gracious truth and meaning, we may enter into the mystery of pardon and into the joy of peace with God; therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We know the reality of the faith by the depth of the peace. This is the gift of God; this is the portion of those who have in them the Spirit of eternal life; this is their sign and their proof and their testimony. So, looking upon the calm of the soul, they live without fear, and they contemplate death in the spirit of victory. We bless thee for thy Word—beginning far away, taking our thoughts back to beginnings and suggestions, and from the Genesis of thy revelation conducting our thought onward and upward to the glorious Apocalypse. May we walk steadily all the way, marvelling at thy wonderful power, and adoring thy wisdom and thy grace; recognising thy sovereignty, and watching the continual and gracious unfoldment of thy high purpose. Thus shall the word of Christ dwell in us richly; we shall receive nutrition from heaven, and in the strength derived from the Bread of Life we shall go on from day to day, until being disembodied, and having no longer this weary tabernacle of the flesh, we shall enter into the joy of perfect spiritual worship, seeing God by the pureness of our heart, and worshipping him with all the faculties he has redeemed and sanctified. Comfort those who are dejected; give a word of counsel and inspiration to any whose thoughts are bewildered. Lead the blind by a way that they know not. Take out of to-morrow the cloud, or the sting, or the fear which makes men dread the dawn; and by giving us peace with God we shall also have given unto us peace with men, and we shall begin to pray where we expected to die. The Lord work this miracle for us in the name and grace of God the Son; then in the wilderness we shall have a garden, and in the place of the hot sand a fountain of living water. Amen.